Different Art: New Essays on Disability and Arts (abstracts due October 1, 2011)

full name / name of organization:

Edited by Christopher R Smit and Raphael Raphael

contact email:

Csmit@calvin.edu, rraphael@hawaii.edu

Different Art: New Essays on Disability and Art
Call for Essays and Artist Statements

The editors of Different Art invite submissions for an innovative new book that explores the complex fusion of disability and artistic expression. This work seeks to investigate and muse on the varied and often contradictory ways that disability in created, contested and circulated in art and media (both in the visual and other forms). We encourage submissions of works that explore these issues from theoretical lens as well as writings from practitioners placing these concerns in dialog with their own practices as artists. This includes artist statements/essays and poetry/prose. In all contributions, we are especially interested in writing that is enriched by consideration of transnational concerns.

This book is already under contract with Intellect LTD, and will be distributed in the US by University of Chicago Press.

Essays may consider any and all forms of artistic expression. As cultural conceptions of disability have historically been wedded to the visual rhetoric of the body, we are especially interested in essays that consider visual media. At the same time, we feel strongly that essays that consider other forms are an important part of the work's scope. As such, the work is organized in six major sections:

Mirroring the format of the book, each section will itself be interdisciplinary in its nature, containing criticism, historical overview and artistic statement(s).

Some initial question may include (but are by no means limited to):

1. What are some of the ways in which the formal properties of particular media may be wedded to particular conceptions of disability?
2. How might we reinterpret conceptions abut the ways in which the meaning of disability has been circulated artistically?
3. In what ways are present theoretical frames of aesthetics insufficient to accommodate the presence of different bodies or minds?
4. Is there a disabled aesthetic?
5. How do different global contexts make sense of the disabled body in their art forms?

Those who wish their works considered for inclusion are kindly requested to submit a brief abstract (300-500 words) along with a very short bio which includes academic affiliation, if any (50-100 words). Submission may be sent by October 1,2011 to the attention of the editors below: